Obama on education: Fund fringe ideas, neglect performance

posted at 10:20 am on October 22, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

The focus on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has mostly rested on Barack Obama’s connection to unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. The New York Post notes that another applicable lesson has been overlooked in that debate. The CAC revealed Obama’s instincts on educational policy, and they don’t run towards the mainstream:

The Obama-led foundation funneled more than $200,000 to an outfit called the Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore.

Its mission: training public-school teachers in “Afrocentric” education, a pseudo-scientific movement that (as a trainer brought in with CAC funds put it) rejects Western civilization, and America in particular, as “white supremacist” and seeks to “recover our disrupted ancestral culture.”

Reading, writing and ‘rithmetic this isn’t. All of which gives the lie to Obama’s breezy assertion in last week’s debate that his CAC activities were somehow bipartisan or mainstream.

It also certainly explains why schools chosen for the foundation’s largesse showed no gains in student performance.

As the Post notes, this provides an interesting tie back to a topic that has John McCain has avoided. The same kind of teachings have most notoriously reached homes nationwide through the sermons of Jeremiah Wright. Obama has tried to distance himself from the man he explicitly identified as a political adviser in early 2007. His pattern of grants to schools at the CAC strongly suggest that Obama shared Wright’s strange views on Afrocentrism; he literally put CAC money where Wright’s mouth was, then and now.

Even without Wright, one has to note the priorities this reveals for Obama on education. Few doubt the need for educational reform in Chicago and other major urban areas. Did Obama attempt to fund real reform through the CAC? No. Instead, he funded crackpots and radicals, using money that could have educated children and given them a better shot at life to support nutcase ideologies like the CIESS. Forget Ayers and Wright for a moment, and think about what that money could have meant for real children, suffering in bad schools, and realize the opportunity wasted by Obama, who seemed more interested in paying off political allies than in the children who needed help.

Barack Obama may or may not be a radical, but clearly he has acted to fund and support radicals at the expense of everyone else. The CAC, his one stint as an executive, utterly failed to improve education despite the tens of millions at his disposal. In seeing his funding priorities like the CIESS, it hardly surprises.

So Obama seeks to make the public schools even worse by introducing more extreme leftist indoctrination. That’s exactly what I expected. We should have never given the schools up to the government. Democrats have turned them into centers for leftist indoctrination and dear little education takes place in them.

If you don’t agree with The One, then you are a RACIST, proving the need for Afrocentric BS.

True education runs counter to control of the masses. As long as they cannot read, Barack “Steve” Obama and the rest of the commie leadership can tell them what to think, how to feel, and most importantly, for whom to vote.

States and localities need to wrest control of education away from the Fed. One of Reagan’s great failures was in not killing the Dept. Of Indoc Education.

I would love to start a free school based on solid conservative principles to help build a future body of young conservatives that can run circles around their public school indoctrinated Liberal counterparts. Any billionaires out there want to fund a School of the Americas?

Yep, the Wright connection should be devastating to Obama’s chances, and not just or even primarily because of the angry soundbites we have, but because of the whole worldview. That’s not something that can be explained in a television commercial, unfortunately.

“Sen Obama, you just told us that Mr Ayers would not be serving in your administration. After renouncing Mr Ayers’ terrorists acts, you said on one occasion that you still respect him as an educator. What makes him unqualified to be Secretary of Education?”

Ed, did you know this was one of over 50 groups that were part of CAC?

Bogeyman numbers two of the day. You use one unnamed source to describe afrocentrism as:

a pseudo-scientific movement that (as a trainer brought in with CAC funds put it) rejects Western civilization, and America in particular, as “white supremacist” and seeks to “recover our disrupted ancestral culture.”

Scary! But how true is it? Not very.

The story goes on to say:

Obama’s breezy assertion in last week’s debate that his CAC activities were somehow bipartisan or mainstream.

The CAC received a letter of support from former Republican governor Jim Edgar. Obama sat on the board with Arnold R. Weber, a life long republican and former adviser to Nixon and Reagan (is Obama a secret Republican????).

Again, this group cited here is one of over 50 that received funding through the CAC. To try and paint the entire challenge and Obama himself as radical because of one man’s skewed description of a group that made up less than 1/50th of the overall CAC is patently misleading.

This is not reporting, it’s distorting. It’s purely political and misleading. Nice work.

Obama’s Annenburg Challenge awarded lawyers and bureaucrats dedicated to creating Socialist Authoriarian Rule UNDER THE DIRECT AUSPICES OF BILL AYERS, Obama’s Führer. (The fact that Führer Ayers remains behind the curtain leaves him totally free and unencumbered to play the puppet master against our Constitution.) Ayers/Obama recreated our nation’s educational system which function is no longer to educate literacy, computations and critical thought process. The education system no longer teaches any traditional curriculum, only socialized revisionism per subject. Its sole function now is to conform the population into Obamatrons, illiterate junkies or Ivy League elitists who leave no room in between for Conservative traditional goals of the Silent Majority Americans.

Vote against the Democrat Majority!

Your dad’s democrat party no longer exists.

It is now the Socialist Party without the guts to admit it to the Silent Majority Americans. So long as they retain the D- by their name, they figure you’re too stupid to deserve any better than SOCIALISM 24/7 with the hollow bribe promises that are only shackles for slaves.

My fear is that with a filibuster-proof majority he might ban homeschooling.

neuquenguy on October 22, 2008 at 10:38 AM<

Be afraid, be very afraid. Homeschooling, prviate schooling, religious schooling – GONE! Don’t forget the Hitler Jungen. To keep the children “safe from the war”, many kids were shipped off to state-run boarding schools where their only influence was Nazi propaganda.

I know I sound a bit extreme, but I fully expect to see national curicula to ensure all schools (public, private, charter) are teaching the same information the same way.

States and localities need to wrest control of education away from the Fed. One of Reagan’s great failures was in not killing the Dept. Of Indoc Education.

I would love to start a free school based on solid conservative principles to help build a future body of young conservatives that can run circles around their public school indoctrinated Liberal counterparts. Any billionaires out there want to fund a School of the Americas?

DerKrieger on October 22, 2008 at 10:34 AM

Agreed!

Homeschooling is our only option! Even the Catholic and sone Christian schools (depending on what State’s) have a feel of Leftwing antics.

Barack Obama may or may not be a radical, but clearly he has acted to fund and support radicals at the expense of everyone else.

Isn’t that what makes him a radical? Maybe he doesn’t really believe all of that, which is getting harder and harder to buy these days, but by paying for it, he’s advancing it just as much as someone who does believe in it.

If ever there was a time for the great state of Texas to consider breaking ties with the federal government, it’s fast approaching. Guys, we still have a little sanity down here. Our cops actually arrest bad guys and citizens can protect their homes (and their neighbors.) We have no state income tax and we’re very business friendly. Our public schools (outside of the metropolises) are pretty good.
Sure, Austin is full of crackpots and parts of Houston and Dallas have the typical “urban issues”, but all-in-all, we at least still resemble what America once was.
Come on down!

‘Social justice’ will be achieved when the USA is relegated to the status of a second or third world nation.

Make the majority of people dependent on government, and then it’s a race to the bottom.

The Messiah, and MSM are promising Utopia. USA will be loved in the world because it dare not compete. (Lefties hate competition – Utopia is a world where competition is banned). What will be delivered is a brave new world.

The role of the MSM in the destruction of America will be ever etched in history. Fools.

But, but, Alan Colmes said the Annenburg Challenge was a success! last night. And Annenburg was a Reagan appointee, or something.

common sensineer on October 22, 2008 at 10:26 AM

I saw that too. What a POS. The August 2003 report concluded that the CAC did nothing to improve the schools that it dealt with. Obama and Ayers could have accomplished more good by buying school supplies. Colmes is full of it.

People need to understand how the Annenberg Foundation worked. Annenberg was a publishing mogul (TV Guide, Seventeen, The Philadelpia Inquirer), who sold out to Rupert Murdosh. Apparently, he hob-nobbed with Reagan enought that Reagan named hime the State Department’s Chief of Protocol, whatever that means.

Anyway, with his fortune, in the late 1980s, he created a foundation with the goal of improving public education. And Annenberg (and probably some others) funded the foundation over a period of years. Once Annenberg made the gifts, the money was in the hands of the foundation. I believe that one or two of his family members were on the board, and the foundation board would receive the grant applications such as the one received from Ayers.

It would be very interesting to see the CAC grant application and the corresponding minutes of the Annenberg Foundation when deciding to give Ayers money. Given how the CAC spent the money, I really wonder whether Ayers was all that candid in the grant application about the day-to-day use of the money. I also wonder how diligent the Annenberg Foundation was in researching Ayers.

I’m confident that Ayers and Obama were the engines behind the absurd use of the funds. Now that this has come to light, I’m damned sure the supposedly conservative members of the board don’t want a lot of light shed on this. My guess is that you had some high-powered people who wanted to serve on a high-profile board and didn’t really want to perform a lot of due diligence, so they left it to Obama and Ayers to administer. Obama would have a lot less explaining to do if he were just another board member. As head of CAD, however, he certainly seems to have been incahoots with Ayers’s nutty waste of $161 million.

This is why the media should have been all over this. Colmes argues that this was all about attempts at school reform and that sometimes (even often) the things you try fail. Well, any moron who has kids in school will tell you that when virtually none of the programs funded were directed at improving the ability of kids to learn reading, math, science, art, and music, you’re wasting money.

In the end, I think one reason not much is being written about this is that some Republican board members were picking their noses and taking naps (at the Annenberg Foundation and at CAC) while Ayers and Obama directed money to God knows where.

Ed writes:

Did Obama attempt to fund real reform through the CAC? No. Instead, he funded crackpots and radicals, using money that could have educated children and given them a better shot at life to support nutcase ideologies like the CIESS.

I agree with this point entirely. One problem is that (so far as I’ve read) no one has demonstrated in dollars and cents how much of $161 million Obama and Ayers pissed away. In this report, I read about only $200K. I don’t doubt that there was far more. There had to be given that these clowns refused to work with the schools directly. In every case, they engaged some “External Partners” who, in turn, worked with the schools. I think this is a huge issue that Stanley Kurtz was able to research too late. I’m sure there’s a gold mine that demonstrates that Obama is quite willing to run off an blow other people’s money on whacky agendas. But folks want more Kool-Aid and more refundable tax credits.

Try this on for size. After a seven year period the Annenberg Foundation evaluated the program and found that it did not meet its objectives and terminated the program. Try explaining your way around that one.

There is one point that I will concede. From Obama’s and Ayers’ point of view the program was an outstanding success. It gave them an opportunity to indoctrinate the next generation while at the same time reducing literacy. Remember, the Leninist philosophy of education is that “we will teach the masses to read well enough to follow our orders.”

You seem to think you are smarter then you are and we are not very bright. The truth is that you may have intelligence but you are so wedded to Obama talking points that you are incapable of rational thought. That we figured this out may be an indication that we aren’t as stupid as we sound sometimes.

Obama served on the “Intellectuals at time of crisis” panel at the UIC with William Ayers that was moderated by Barbara Ransby (who oh-so-coincidentally was at Columbia at the same time as Obama). Barbara Ransby is a founding member of the Black Radical Congress. What’s that you may ask?

It seemed to us the idea of bringing together the varied sections of the Black radical tradition – Socialists and Communists, revolutionary nationalists, and radical Black feminists and womanists – was long overdue. We began talking with others about the idea and possibilities for such a gathering…

As for Barry’s crazy uncle Jeremiah:

There is one more significant link between the Black Radical Congress and Barack Obama. One session at the Congress was entitled;

Faith as a Weapon: Spirituality and the Role of the Church In The Radical Movement. What are the lessons we can learn from Nat Turner, Absalom Jones, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black ministers as leaders in the struggle? What is the history of spiritual motivation in the radical/liberation movement?

This is not reporting, it’s distorting. It’s purely political and misleading. Nice work.

Tom_Shipley on October 22, 2008 at 10:42 AM

People fought Stanley Kurtz tooth and nail to get at the CAC records in August. That one man can’t sift through all that and, in turn, research every recipient is not hard to understand. Instead, the media is up in Alaska digging up dirt on the VP candidate and in Toledo on Joe the Plumber.

Sorry, where there’s smoke there’s fire. The mere presence of the network of External Partners through whom CAC channeled their funds is enough to raise red flags. Read the conclusion of the report: no difference between Annenberg schools and other schools in Chicago. Guess that constitutes a lot of failed trial-and-error.

Also, it’s interesting to read the analysis. It remarks that one of CAC’s problems was that its goals were very unclear. In fact, I remember reading that the evaluators remarked that the CAC board cited “change” as a one of its goals–without providing a lot of detail about what that change would be.

I am worried about Obama taking two days off. I know people here want to be sensitive to Obama’s grandmom but I can’t shake off a feeling of nervousness. I don’t think Obama cares enough about his typical white person granny to take two days off.

Is it the typical Obama overconfidence that he thinks he can lose 2 days in the final stretch?

Do they have a nasty October Surprise for the Mccain campaign and he is tryin to hide away while the media does it job?

Or else are they really worried and this is just a head fake to get out the media message that they are going to wina landslide?

This is precisely the point I’ve been trying to make here and elsewhere.

Take a close look at the CAC documents and you can find out a lot about the agenda of Bill Ayers and Obama by simply where they spent money.

Why the Hell has this not been a bigger story? It is demonstrable that mainstream grant applications for after school math tutoring and similar programs were poo pooed in favor of a well known, hard line communist like Mike Klonsky.

And who is Mike Klonsky?

Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator and political activist. He is perhaps most famous for being National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society in 1968…

…On May 12, 1969, Klonsky and four other SDSers were arrested at the organization’s Chicago national headquarters for assaulting a police officer, interfering with a firefighter, and inciting mob action[/b]. A prank call to a local police station said there had been a shooting at SDS’ offices. When the police arrived, Klonsky and the others were convinced it was a ruse to gain access to SDS’ offices.[1] Klonsky convinced the police everything was fine, when a second prank call brought local firefighters to the scene. When the police attempted to force entry to the offices, Klonsky and the others resisted. Convinced state repression of SDS was coming, Klonsky told a national television audience on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that police repression of the New Left was being planned by the U.S. Department of Justice…

…At SDS’ June 1969 national convention in Chicago, Klonsky played a major role in the dissolution of the organization. A group of 11 SDS national leaders—including Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, John Jacobs, Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, Terry Robbins, and Howie Machtinger—had met in April and May of 1969 to craft a response to PL supporters within SDS. Their article, “You Don’t Need A Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows,” was published in New Left Notes on June 18, 1969, the day the convention opened. The “Weatherman” statement denounced imperialism and racism, and repudiated PL’s claim that youth culture was bourgeois. The Weatherman statement called for revolutionary violence at home to stop imperialism, and the formation of collectives in major cities to support violence and stop factionalism.

According to letter dated 1995, Obama’s office was on the 3rd floor of 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 … the same address as the Annenberg Challenge according to a 1998 tax form ….. And according to memo dated 1996, Small Schools Workshop was also on the 3rd floor of 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 and the contact person was Mike Klonsky …
NOTE:
…Obama was a state senator from 1996-2004. However, he still likely spent some significant time at the Sangamon street address, especially in 1995. But even after his election he would presumably be working on his CAC duties at the Sangamon office, not from some other location….

….Obama chaired the board of the CAC, more than $600,000 was granted to an organization founded by Ayers and run by Mike Klonsky, a former top communist activist. Klonsky was leader of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which was effectively recognized by China as the all-but-official U.S. Maoist party.”…

1999- 2002: Ayers served as a director alongside Barack Obama of the Woods Fund of Chicago

Mike Klonsky is listed as Co-Director with Bill Ayers at the same address as Obama. Now, not only do we have Obama linked to Ayers, but also Klonsky.

Apparently Klonsky , an Ayers ally, had an office in the same building and on the same floor as Obama.

Klonsky, you might recall, had his very own blog on the Obama for President website – until it disappeared under the bus after being outed by conservative bloggers.

Asides:

(1) Obama must have been required to take history classes along with law classes, and as a civil rights attorney, he must have knowledge of the time period associated with Ayers & Klonskyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
…A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004…

(2) Obama, New Party, ACORN, SEUI union

Oct 1996: New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races ( includes Barack Obama, State Senate ):http://web.archive.org/web/20010306031216/www.newparty.org/u…
Illinois:
…Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)….

New Party (NP) : ACORN, SEUI union, etchttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Party_(United_States)
…Some of these chapters — such as those in Chicago and Little Rock — had their main bases of support in the low-income community organizing group ACORN, along with some support from various labor unions (especially ACORN-allied locals of the Service Employees International Union)….
…Left-wing critics of the New Party, such as supporters of the Green Party, argued that the New Party was merely a pressure group on the fringes of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuinely new political party…

New Party : by 1996, party of hardcore leftist radicals — an amalgamation of communists, socialisthttp://archive.redstate.com/tags/new_party
…Obama began seeking the New Party endorsement in 1995. He had been running in a four way primary against his former boss, Senator Alice Palmer,… an election law quirk gave Obama the upper hand. In order to get on the ballot, candidates had to collect signatures of voters. Printed names were not allowed. Obama challenged the petitions of his rivals and was able to get every one of them thrown off the ballot…
…By the time the ballot was drawn up for the 1996 election, Obama’s was the only name in the race….
…Nonetheless, Obama still coveted the New Party endorsement…
…The New Party required candidates who received the endorsement sign a pledge of support for the party…
…Obama did not need to support a party that was, in effect, a front group for communists; yet he still chose to….
…The July issue of the New Ground noted that 15% of the New Party consisted of Democratic Socialists of America members and a good number of Committee of Correspondence members…

I am worried about Obama taking two days off. I know people here want to be sensitive to Obama’s grandmom but I can’t shake off a feeling of nervousness. I don’t think Obama cares enough about his typical white person granny to take two days off.

Is it the typical Obama overconfidence that he thinks he can lose 2 days in the final stretch?

Do they have a nasty October Surprise for the Mccain campaign and he is tryin to hide away while the media does it job?

Or else are they really worried and this is just a head fake to get out the media message that they are going to wina landslide?

promachus on October 22, 2008 at 11:17 AM

The big questions are 1.) How did Obama’s grandma survive the first trip under the bus, and 2.) How can they finsih the job and make it McBush’s fault?

Sorry to be such a cynic, but it’s a chance to buy two days of possibly softer attacks, to run the granny theme, and to get some prep time for the big half-hour presentation without saying that you’re taking time out for it.

Is it the typical Obama overconfidence that he thinks he can lose 2 days in the final stretch?

He’s not overconfident – if anything, he’s terrified, because his internals are telling him he’s losing the election

Do they have a nasty October Surprise for the Mccain campaign and he is tryin to hide away while the media does it job?

If the birth certificate story has any legs – and I’m not sure it does – Obama’s journey to Hawaii may very well have an explanation other than a trip to grandma’s house. If so, he is not going there to create an October Surprise, but to prevent one. If it can be demonstrated with any empirical certainty that he was born in Kenya, his campaign is instant toast.

Or else are they really worried and this is just a head fake to get out the media message that they are going to wina landslide?

Sorry to be such a cynic, but it’s a chance to buy two days of possibly softer attacks, to run the granny theme, and to get some prep time for the big half-hour presentation without saying that you’re taking time out for it. – BuckeyeSam on October 22, 2008 at 11:21 AM

That’s the least cynical and most likely explanation in my opinion. It’s called politics. *shrugs* Happens all the time in an election campaign.

It’s nice that the podium has the judgement to lead as per the banner, unfortunately the jackass candidate will be wearing a big fat “trainee” button if the American people are collectively addled enough to vote this idiot into office.

Simply read the list of outside partners and the points of contact and then use google. It is that simple. For example, the small schools project was started by Mike Klonsky who is a self professed Marxist who cofounded a communist party, also a close friend of Ayers from the SDS/Weatherman days. He is well known and also a university professor in education (as is Francis Fox Piven and her strategy of manufactured crisis). The small schools project was used to push specific political agendas.

Tom, this is pretty simple stuff. A lot of the folks and project who received money are friends, associates or fellow travelers of Bill Ayers. The fact that some other mainstream folks sat on the board but were not particularly active is not the issue (but they deserve scorn as well). These folks provided political cover for Ayers and his accomplice Obama to put politics ahead of known, workable solutions like after school math tutoring.

Really? Well I’m not surprised. This sucks. ‘Cause I’m sure it affects what they display on their site.

As a public screwl teacher GEE! I can hardly wait to see what new ‘ideas’ we get to implement in the classroom.
We already waste enough $$ & time on stupid crap, what else can we do?
Well hopefully it won’t come right away. I’m in a small rural school & it seems like the crap from the fan doesn’t spray this far.
We still have Christmas programs with Jesus in them-the shock of it all!

I am worried about Obama taking two days off. I know people here want to be sensitive to Obama’s grandmom but I can’t shake off a feeling of nervousness. I don’t think Obama cares enough about his typical white person granny to take two days off.

Is it the typical Obama overconfidence that he thinks he can lose 2 days in the final stretch?

unless she’s on her deathbed, but waiting a few days before he flies out, you’d think he would wait till after the election to go see her if there wasn’t any alternative motives at play.

His pattern of grants to schools at the CAC strongly suggest that Obama shared Wright’s strange views on Afrocentrism; he literally put CAC money where Wright’s mouth was, then and now.

Of course Obama shares Wright’s views on Afrocentrism (and a lot of other things — like America’s inherent evil). Obama joined a black radical “church” whose mission statement says that it pledges its allegiance to the “motherland” of Africa, and believes that God should side with blacks against whites and if He does not take the side of blacks, then God should be killed! Obama remained a member of this “church” for more than 20 years, was married in the church, and had his children baptised there. Obama left the church only a few months ago, after Wright embarrassed him by stating in front of t.v. cameras that Obama is a politician who will say anything to get elected. (Ironically, it was one of the few 100% true things Wright has ever said. The other was his recent statement that the term “Christian” has a very different meaning to members of his church than it does for most of mainstream Christian America).

If Obama’s 20-year+ membership in Wright’s black militant “church” not become a political liability for Obama, does anyone doubt that he would still be a member today?

I would love to start a free school based on solid conservative principles to help build a future body of young conservatives that can run circles around their public school indoctrinated Liberal counterparts.

We already have that school system. It is called “Home School”. Home schooled children usually standout as better educated and prepared for college than their publically schooled peers.

What I find interesting is that most parents that home school their children do not hold degrees in education, they are not considered super teachers. Yet they succeed where other degree holding teachers fail. What really attributes to this success is a moral based conservative curriculum.

How many liberal based home school curriculum do you hear about, let alone successful ones.

I hold educational degrees in secondary social studies and 1-12 special education. My public teaching was always based on the belief that a student will rise to the teacher’s expectations and their individual abilites. That is a conservative approach to education. My students, whether elementary or high school level, were almost always successful, often far beyond their peers who had teachers that followed the more liberal approaches.

Years ago before the liberal curriculums requirements were imposed, I created the high school level curriculums used in special education to teach grades 9 and 10 English and all the social studies courses. As the mandates became more liberal, those were discarded in favor of the more liberal based demands.

During my last year of teaching at the high school level I was put on probation and told I had to take classes and perform observation of other teachers to re-educate me in the proper way to teach, because I taught my special education students to recognized parts of speech, to write correct sentences, math that included long division, subtraction with borrowing and multiplication with carrying, and to use a computer with the same basic skills taught in the regular program. The problem was that the federal mandates imposed upon these children dictated a first grade level of education. I met then exceeded those mandates. I also taught World History to regular education students. I was not allowed to teach as I wanted with variety and interest. I had to teach to a test given to students as part of the “No Child Left Behind” mandates. I was held accountable to how well my students did on that test. Most of my students did very well, but that counted for nothing in the end.

Tom, I’m not going to spend the afternoon spoon feeding information that is widely available to anyone who has the desire to educate themselves. I provided the link to the docs and it is simply a matter of public record.

If you want to live in a parallel universe of sweetness and light, so be it but it is silly to argue that these are the only recipients when you have not taken the time to educate yourself.

Read the minutes of the meetings Tom.

The CAC failed to deliver the opportunities to those people they were entrusted to help and for that, everyone on the board bears responsibility.

Does anyone really believe that starting an alternative school program that pushes peace studies is more important than enabling kids with after school math tutoring? Well the folks at the CAC apparently did.

Tom, do yourself a favor and start googling the names of people listed as either program coordinators, grant recipients, and organization names. Things will start popping out like popcorn. For example, one recipient was a vocal protester/activist against military recruiters having access to high schools.

As an Army vet, I and my wife and millions of others have benefited from the opportunities provided as a result of military service. This is a great choice for many kids. Do you actually think this “social activist” is a conservative?

Do a little reading Tom before you start staking out positions that are so obviously inconsistent with the facts.

Barack Obama may or may not be a radical, but clearly he has acted to fund and support radicals at the expense of everyone else.

WARNING: Ed, you’re starting to sound like McCain. Why are you bending over backward to give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he still might not be a radical? I mean, if you’re funding radicals, isn’t that pretty objective evidence? If not, what is?!?! Exactly what else would one have to do to finally be labeled a radical?

I heard Giuliani on Hannity last night go right to edge of calling Obama a socialist, look over the edge, hint that going over the edge was okay, but wouldn’t actually say that Obama was a socialist. If one espouses socialist ideas, isn’t one, by definition, a socialist?

Put another way, does Obama himself have to stand up and say, “I’m a radical socialist,” before we can start labeling him as such? For the sake of our intellectual honesty, I hope not, not to mention the sake of the country.